Like this:

“Our first day traveling down the river ended. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, a hint of the importance of what was to come. Burma yanked at a blanket with his teeth. I took it from him and pulled it up over our snuggled bodies. Fiddling through my slingbags, I found some dried fruit, which we ate while staring expectantly for the moments when the trees would open above us and allow us to see the immense beauty of the night sky, its brilliant starlight showering the eventide with charm. Every time the trees closed up again, our eyelids drooped a little more, until they shut.”

“The sunlight gently lit up the orb from the inside, just as a candle is used to kindle another. He sighed with pleasure and passed me the little pygmy globe. I cupped my palms, surprised by the offering, and held it like a fragile, soft-shelled queepfluff egg. It was heavy and warm, and throbbed with a tiny pulse that vibrated gently through its crystal wall.”

“You’d think that you’d think before climbing into a car with random idiots.”

“Ya, I get it, Damien. I didn’t think. I messed up . . . again.”

The opening scene of the Nirvana Threads was inspired by my experience, once upon a time, hitchhiking in British Columbia, Canada. The driver was playing chicken on the highway with random cars from the opposite lane. I remember thinking: “this might be how I’m going to die” and clutching the side of my seat and mentally calling on God to do his will. Although I don’t outright mention it’s chicken they’re playing in the car in TNT, the picture is still painted. I hope you give it a read!!

When we write, whether poetry, short stories, or novels, inspiration can come from anywhere, at anytime, and an urge to get to a piece of paper, a computer, a laptop, or often for me, the notes app, pushes us forward almost uncontrollably. Because we know the idea can slip away as easily as it came. We have to get it down, asap.

A gentle place where inspiration often comes is while journalling. Some years back, I was on a creative “diet” prescribed in Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. It was during the reading and carrying out of the activities in this workbook that I finally decided to take the plunge and write a novel, because even though I’d been writing forever, I’d never given myself that permission. She helped me realize I actually wanted to, and that I could go ahead and just do it.

Now any parent can understand that it’s hard to keep routines such as morning journalling, yoga or meditation with the busy life that comes with having kids. I try to journal somewhat regularly now, but when I chose to write Topaz, I was very disciplined.

The idea for the book had come from the page itself. The inspiration for Mirth’s whiteness was the whiteness of the lined paper I was writing on. (I journal longhand in the ugliest spiral notebook I can find. If it’s too lovely, I can’t bear to mark it with my messy scrawl.)

The idea of the belly button portal to another world, and also the idea of the orbiglass worlds, was taken from a story I wrote in my twenties for a graphic novel called Gravitée. You can say I stole my own idea. It was a project that never got past some sketches and minimal research.

The main idea of the graphic novel was that of a society de-evolved to the point that everyone had claws and tails, and a small community of rebels were left with old clues from their deceased astrologer ancestors to help them save their world after the earthquakes. Saved, that is, from the charlatan priests that led them and took advantage of fear and ignorance to pretend the gods needed appeasing. Gravitée was the name of the main character, who is now Topaz, and in her “umbi-pit” world she would meet a a guide, who became Mallo. The original idea was that the the center of the universe was in her navel. It was inspired by an expression in French “le nombril du monde” which is usually negative, implying someone thinks they are the center of the universe. In this case it was true. She was the centre.

Topaz’s premise is completely different, one of a girl who sets off from an absurd dystopian society in search for authenticity and happiness, but the magical components of Gravitée fit her like a glove.

Never throw out old ideas! Who knows when they can be of use. Like a box of sewing scraps, you can explore it and find lace to add to a hem, or fancy buttons to sew down the front of your home-made garment.

Have you ever salvaged old ideas, whether with writing or otherwise? Tell me in the comments!

Here are a few more weird things from Mirth, Topaz’s umbi-pit playing a bigger role in this book than one would expect from a such a small body part. Check out this link: Topaz: The Truth Portal & The Color Mayhemto learn more about Topaz and her quest for freedom and emancipation.

“[…] the inked words. How meaningless they could have seemed a few months before, and somehow rich with parallels now. Impressions of how they related to her existence sailed her mind, passing through in waves. Like tiny suns of understanding bursting at the crest of each ripple, the longer she sat with the words, the more intense became her clarity. And then, quite suddenly, as if stepping out of a cold sea, Carlie felt wide awake, washed clean of the dirt that had been pulling her down.”

Like this:

Georgia’s antennas were made of the finest silver. They picked up the tiniest of signals, vibrated at the faintest of sounds. Georgia would set herself up in the grass on her front lawn and pick up whatever she could from the people walking by. And there were lots. Lots of people, and lots of things to be caught by her sensitive apparatus. Fidgety fingers, sluggish feet, fake laughs, infuriated sighs and quiet, broken-hearted sighs, heart palpitations, fluttering eyelashes, and even the cracking of smiles triggered from the secret thoughts that no instrument could ever pick up.

Georgia never missed a thing, but no one ever noticed her, sitting in the grass with her silver antennas, observing the world blow by on a wind of drama. Because that’s all it was to her: a stage. The backdrop, the trees against the sky, and the lighting, no less than the sun or the moon. The curtains, her drooping eyelids, were the only thing that pulled her away from the show and the myriad feelings it evoked. The empathy within her grew day by day, year after year, until she was no more than a puddle of emotion, spread low and wide, shapeless and soft, the silver antennas steadfastly trapping and transferring data from out there where her front lawn ended and the world began.

Like this:

Stan stopped chewing and turned to look at me, torn pages dangling from his mouth.

“I should have know you’d be trouble,” I said, flipping through the accounting records. “It’s been a rough few months, we’ll have to closeif we keep this up. We need to draw more people.”

Stan spat out the pages and walked over to the blackboard in one big step, ducking to avoid the fluorescents. The chalk between his teeth, he began to draw a stick figure.

“Not that kind of draw, you long-necked twit.”

The giraffe dropped the chalk and went back to nosing through the books on the highest shelf. Wth his tongue, he opened a cloth-covered, vintage edition (they tasted so much better with age) and ripped out a page, slowly, so as to not be heard.

“I told you to stop eating the leaves, Stan!” I slammed my hands on my desk and glared at him.

Stan stopped chewing and turned to look at me, torn pages dangling from his mouth. After a few moments, he began to chew again. Isipped my bitter coffee and went back to flipping through the accounting records.